NBT- I'm going racing 😳

[weeksy]

Hold on.... why are you not racing an 890R next year ????

[Tricky]

You know that you're going to have to post detailed write ups of the entire process!

Yup will do, with plenty of pics as I know we all love those (well, I do, anyway )

Hold on.... why are you not racing an 890R next year ????

Potential reliability worries aside ( which TBH are not insignificant) , an 890R would be a very decent bet in Naked Streetbike I reckon, but I dunno, a big old Tuono has no electronics, and aside from being considerably cheaper to acquire, and quite likely run, than an 890R, it is just that bit more basic and more me ( ) I reckon .
It is a moot point though, for next season at least, as I've decided I'll just stick with the Bandit only, purely for the reasons we both highlighted a few posts back ( basically van size, amount of kit to take etc)

[Tricky]

Prince of Pembrey meeting Oct25th - 27th

As I mentioned a post or two ago, although the Bandit Challenge Championship is all done and dusted and the season from that perspective has ended, North Gloucester had one final race weekend scheduled for the weekend just gone, and I’d entered it
As I think I also mentioned, although there weren’t Bandit-specific races in the schedule, there were two Naked Streetbike classes- the regular one that allows up to 1000cc twins, 800cc triples, and some older 1000cc 4 cyls, and to try and encourage as many of us Bandit boys to enter, they had also created a max 600cc Naked Streetbike (600NSB) class, which is as it sounds, any unfaired streetbike with a maximum capacity of 600cc is eligible for, and it doesn't have the strict technical and tyre regs that the Bandit series has, albeit almost all of us ran our Bandits just as they were,and used the Bandit series regulation Dunlop SportSmart TT tyres that we'd be running all season.
I’d entered that and the “Newcomers” classes, which would give me five races over the weekend, plus of course qualifying and warm-ups, and I'd also booked onto the Friday test day.
An absolute bargain relatively speaking, at ~£300 all in, which is £200+ less than pretty much every other usual NG meeting
The long trek down the M4 very rarely has been without hold-ups and traffic jams for me over the years, so I loaded the van Thursday morning and we were on our way at 1 pm.
And very pleasingly, we arrived at the circuit just after 5pm, with no hold-ups (apart from those caused by the quite ridiculous Welsh speed limits ), even after stopping for coffee etc on the way, and queued up outside the circuit gates along with a number of others, waiting for the car team who’d hired it for the day, to vacate.

Pit garages were available to all at this meeting on a “ first come, first served” basis ( basically an email with a booking request link comes out a week or two before, and the first however many to respond get a space)- for some unknown reason I’d completely omitted to respond, so although when I realized my omission I’d been pleading with NG admin for a space in the days before the meeting, they were, as usual, over-subscribed.
I hence had the gazebo and gennie etc in the van, with the view of setting that up on Thursday evening, and hopefully being able to wangle my way into a garage at some point on Friday, as the forecast was that at least part of the weekend was going to be wet, and it was already pretty windy.

So, in we went, I filled up all my 25l water canisters ( I use them to weigh the gazebo down), and Isabella and I set about getting the gazebo up.
It proved to be a very taxing time, as by now, the wind really was very strong, and even before we got any of the sides on , the wind was trying to take the gazebo down the paddock, and after a very frustrating 15mins or so of trying and failing to get the sides zipped on, and just getting lashed in the face by them, , I gave up, and we chucked it all back in the van.
I went down to the garages in the hope that someone would take pity on us, and although 3 of the Bandit boys in one garage said, yeah, squash in with s, their garage already had more bikes in it than recommended, and not everyone had arrived yet, so organisers vetoed it, saying see how things are in the morning when everyone had arrived and go from there

We, therefore, trundled back to Llanelli, where we were staying for the next three nights, with me pretty down and stressed and absolutely everything still in the van, although when I say everything, that’s not completely true, as when we got into the room, I discovered that I’d left all my base layers and socks at home, arse!
So, I went straight back out to the local Asda superstore and bought some thermal long-johns and tops—not ideal, but they would do.

I didn’t sleep at all well that night and set off for the circuit at 7ish- this was the view from the van driving to the circuit



Less than ideal, as you can see, and the circuit was very flooded in places, well, nearly everywhere actually!



But on the positive side, the rain had stopped by approx 8:30ish, and the forecast was looking excellent for Saturday, and cloudy but dry for Sunday, so although it was still very overcast, things were looking up

After using every ounce of charm and salesmanship that I have, and thanks to the generosity of a good number of my fellow racers, I managed to get permission to squeeze into a garage with 4 other Bandits, a 764RS, 3 x CBR/R6 600s and an R1, so no faffing with gazebos or generators required, yay- result!



The rain pretty much stayed away all morning so although it did take a while, things dried out enough to mean that I never bothered putting the wets in, and by the afternoon it was completely dry and I had 2 or 3 really good sessions-I wasn’t timing myself, but the bike felt good and seemed spot on, so it really was just a matter of checking tyre pressures and sticking fuel in it, and we retired back to the Premier Inn , very happy and all set for qualifying on Saturday morning.

As may be seen, there was a cracking quantity discount offer on greetings cards on sale in the Premier Inn reception too, although we passed on it


This meeting had a very different sort of vibe already to all the championship rounds this year- it was undoubtedly quieter with fewer entries, but more than that, there seemed to be more children there, and everyone just seemed so relaxed.



There were also one or two classes that we don’t normally see too- as well as sidecars, one of the British MiniBikes sub-classes- basically 7-10 year-olds on 50-70cc strokers. It's a shame that there were only 4 of them entered ( one of them being Josh Day’s boy who is the one in the vid and absolutely walked all races) , and Pembrey is a massive circuit for these little things, so wasn’t really close racing for them, but was great to see them there





It's the first time I've seen riders playing with their lego between practice sessions too



Another factor that I think influenced the nice vibe was how they were running this meeting, as a sort of mini-self-contained championship.
By that I mean that there were not trophies for every race, only for the top three points scorers in each class at the end of the weekend when all races had run, ie you could get a maximum of one trophy for each class .

This added a bit of spice made it really interesting I thought, especially for Sunday’s races.
And, being the trophy whore that I am ( ) , when I signed on again Saturday morning and saw all the entry lists in the respective classes, and the relatively low cost of entering a third class, it also persuaded me to enter the big-boys Naked Streetbike (NSB) class too, as it looked like there were only two others entered, which by my reckoning meant that as long as I finished at least one of those 3 extra races in the points I would potentially be up for a trophy in that class, even if I didn’t manage it in the NSB600 or Newcomers classes

Grid-wise, those races were still a decent size, as although there were now only 3 NSBs they had been combined with the Supertwins and PI600s
So that added another qualifying session and 3 more races to my programme, giving me a total of 8 races over the two days

My first qualifying session was for the NSBs, and although I felt I was riding OK, my times told a different story- 2 seconds off what I’d done in the Bandit round there back in May this year, but it still put me 13th on the grid with 7 or 8 still behind me, so not completely embarrassing, and well, it didn’t really matter in this class I was definitely going to get third in class or better, wherever I finished on the road

I made no changes to the bike but had a little bit of a chat with myself and NSB600 qualifying went a fair bit better, 2 seconds better in fact, which was 3rd fastest NSB600 ( there were 10 or so Bandits entered) , 1.2 secs off pole and put me 6th on the grid, behind two Bandits one TZ and a couple of 400s – NSB600 were sharing the grid with the “Open 500” and DesmoDue classes, and I was happy with that.

I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of every single race, but in short, in the NSB600 class, I finished 3rd in race 1, 5th in race2 and 2nd in race 3- that last race was particularly satisfying, as not only was it 2nd in class, it was 2nd over the line, giving me 3rd highest points scorer and a trophy!

In the Newcomers, I finished 2nd (by a gnats) in the first race after a race-long and contact-heavy battle with Grant Davies, and I finished 3rd in the second race, again by an absolute gnats to Grant - it meant we finished the weekend equal on points and race positions, so it was decided on fastest lap over the two races, mine was 0.2 quicker than his so I took it - 2nd place Trophy in that one
And in the big-boy NSBs, I got beaten up a fair bit in one, but had some good races, and loved it . I didn’t trouble the leaders but finished 3rd NSB in each of the 3 races, so another trophy in that one,so a trophy in every class I'd entered, with no " Senior" sub-class to prop me up, result eh!



So what started out pretty badly turned into one of, if not the most enjoyable weekends I’ve ever had- the second Newcomer race and final NSB600 races were two of the closest and most exciting ever for me, and the others weren’t without incident either- I got a 10sec penalty for jump-start/grid infringement in one of the NSB600 races, got sideswiped off the track in another and there was plenty of really close racing, but despite all that I finished every race in respectable positions and had just so much fun- the camaraderie and laughs off track were absolutely top-notch, and the Saturday night curry at the Sheesh Mahal was pretty decent too.
All in all, a cracking weekend, and I can’t wait to do it again

Oh and these are my tyres today- they have done all of the last (Donington) meeting and everything this weekend and were still allowing me to set my fastest laps in the last race- the way these TTs (don't) wear means that they will probably also stay on for my first couple of meetings next year too- that's proper good value eh!





Having said that, I still didn’t quite get into the 1:06s at Pembrey on the old girl, but I am not sure I would have even on brand new TTs, but I'm only a whisker away, and I will ( or all being well, 1:05s ) roll next year!

[ChrisW]

Awesome write-up, glad you had a good meeting.

[Dodgy69]

Nice one @Tricky . A good year indeed.

[Supermofo]

Sounds like a great weekend all round.

[Buckaroo]

That bike of yours has been amazing, as has the pilot.

Onwards and upwards @Tricky

[Tricky]

Well, bit of an update on my next season, hot off the press as it were.

Formula Prostocks ( the club that has run the Bandit Challenge series since its inception in 2015, along with other 80s/90s superbike classes), has as of yesterday folded and announced it is no more, and is refunding 2025 club subs for anyone who has already paid.

TBH it isn't a big surprise, as the writing has been on the wall for the last couple of months since Keith, the bloke who has run it , casually told one of the Bandit boys at the final round at Anglsey that he had cancelled the planned end-of-season awards ceremony, and there wouldn't be any championship trophies or anything else as he's run out of money.
He didn't , however, put out any form of formal announcement on on the awards night being canceled, or what would happen for championship winners, though, and still hasn't, even in yesterday's folding announcement.
There has been a whole load of other stuff too that has been going on relating to him and how the club is run, and without getting all the dirty-washing out, suffice to say he's come in for a lot of flack both throughout the season and quite a lot on social media recently ( deservedly so in my, and it seems 99% of other club members opinions), so TBH I'm not that surprised, but it does potentially change my next season plans.

Even though the Bandit and other FPR classes have apparently been down on numbers the last season or two compared to pre-covid years, there's still a fair number of us with those sorts of bikes that want to race next season, so NG have today announced that they are stepping in and will be running classes to accommodate the Bandits, and the FP2/3s (80s/90s superbikes)

This announcement was only this morning, so they haven't published tech regs yet, but if I had to guess now, I would say rather than being the Bandit Challenge, it will be a "Naked Streetbike 600" class , as NG ran at the recent Prince of Pembrey (PoP) end of season meeting.

If my guess is correct, then that potentially opens up further options, depending on the regs, as if it's run with the same rules as the PoP meeting, that means that things like 600 Hornets, Fazers etc and whatever tyres and engine mods you like would be eligible, and although I suspect a fair few Bandits would still be raced in the class as they are now, they are not the most powerful or light things and to have a hope of being near the front would mean a change of bike, or significant Bandit engine/chassis mods at least .

So we shall see- I might even buy another Tuono or 765RS and change class to the full-fat Naked Streetbike, or possibly even go DesmoDue- those boys do seem to have a fairly good social side and their grids are usually fairly well attended .

Anyway, interesting times for me, more to follow after NG have published full class lists and regs, and I'll decide what I do then, but one thing I am certain of is that I will be racing something

[KungFooBob]

I did DD for three years, they're by far the most social group of racers you'd ever meet.

BHR events are quite chilled too if you can find something ancient to race, then again they do host Early Stocks too, so you could race an old VFR750.

I also like the look of the class that races the FZ600s with the CRMC. The bikes are as cheap as Bandits, but a lot older.

[Tricky]

I did DD for three years, they're by far the most social group of racers you'd ever meet.

BHR events are quite chilled too if you can find something ancient to race, then again they do host Early Stocks too, so you could race an old VFR750.

I also like the look of the class that races the FZ600s with the CRMC. The bikes are as cheap as Bandits, but a lot older.

Agree- I didn't have too much contact with the DD boys this season , but they are definitely a nice friendly lot, and there's some decent racing there.
I'm most likely going to stick with an NG class for this season at least, but yep, some of the CRMC classes appeal too.

[Couchy]

I did DD for three years, they're by far the most social group of racers you'd ever meet.

BHR events are quite chilled too if you can find something ancient to race, then again they do host Early Stocks too, so you could race an old VFR750.

I also like the look of the class that races the FZ600s with the CRMC. The bikes are as cheap as Bandits, but a lot older.

Some FZ600's in our yard....I say 600's as to be competitive you need a 680, cams, porting and prob £2k in the engine alone. The steelie class is a better option at CRMC

[weeksy]

That's a shame as that class seemed perfect. Any other class that's got a mix of bikes, power, tyres etc can end up a minefield of performance gains which kinda spoils things a lot.

[Tricky]

That's a shame as that class seemed perfect. Any other class that's got a mix of bikes, power, tyres etc can end up a minefield of performance gains which kinda spoils things a lot.

Yup, completely agree, the Bandit ( and DD / Minitwin to a lesser extent) classes do, generally speaking keep costs down and racing close due to the technical rules and control tyres.

Have to say, now that Bemsee are acknowledging the beefier ones among us for 2025, this also potentially appeals too...

[

[mangocrazy]

So make sure you weigh either 76kg or 96kg post race...